HAPPY TURKEY DAY TO ALL YOU OLD BIRDS OUT THERE!

Hope it's a good one.

Creative Block

She felt all her best ideas were trapped inside her head.

I know I've been away for several days but things are so busy at work right now, and I have had some obligations after work each evening this week. I don't expect my schedule to lighten up much before all this holiday crunch is over, so I will post when I can come up for air and I will be around to visit you when I can.

This is the page I made for Soulbrush's sketchbook in the Artysoulsisters round robin. I was at a complete loss for what to put into her book, as several people before me added some dynamite artwork. I though about what I know of Soulbrush and I remembered how much she likes to collect artist trading cards. She has quite a few (over 400 to be exact!) but I know she doesn't have one this BIG! This is the main page and it features my trademark dyed tissue paper, words about friendship, some rubber stamps and a few postage stamps.

But that's not all! I also included some actual trading cards attached with clear corners which can be removed if she wants to keep them somewhere else.

And this is my worktable with some works in progress. I don't know where I'm going with any of this; just fooling around with color. Maybe I'll just store them away until the next sketchbook arrives and do something with them then, who knows?


Meanwhile, nose to the grindstone, HO, HO, HO!

Lazy Sunday

Because I'm such a nice person, I'm featuring my other cat, Stella, on today's post. Stella is a bit of a prima donna. She mostly likes to lie around looking glamorous, moving sparingly so as not to mess up her hair, except when she is sleeping, which is half the day. Both my cats are Maine Coon Cats, which are the largest domestic breed cat. Stella is by far smaller than Rascal, but she is still large. They also have multiple toes per foot.

I, also moved very little today. I bagged a few more (5 more bags) of leaves, then I retired to my bench to read my new book from the library. It is titled "The Wednesday Sisters" by
Meg Waite Clayton. It is similar to the Ya Ya Sisterhood, about five women friends in the late 60's and early 70's, and I am liking it a lot.

Some of the leaves I missed.

I love to watch the colors change in the woods behind our house.

Sunset at the end of the day.

I may be away from the computer for a while as I am having some busy days coming up this next week, but I will post when I can and I will try to get around to each of you as often as possible.

I hope you have a happy and creative week.

My cat, Rascal, is my best buddy and my favorite art critic. He thinks he has to be right where I'm working, no matter what it is that I am doing, so I gave him top billing in my new header photo. He also has his own stool at my art table so he can see everything that's going on. I hope he's happy now that he's had his fifteen minutes of fame. Royalty check is in the mail.

I got a couple sketchbooks in the mail several days ago in the "artysoulsisters" round robin. One of them belongs to Marianne, in the Netherlands and the other is Joss's in England. This page is for Marianne whose cat Sjimmie is traveling the world through her book. She wanted Sjimmie to get a feel for life in each of our areas.
This picture, titled "Sunday in the Park" shows me taking Sjimmie on a nature walk through my favorite sculpture park, Pyramid Hill. We had a terrific time looking at all the sculptures and watching the ducks in the pond. He wants to come back and do it again.
This is just a simple watercolor, pen and ink.

I haven't started work on Joss's book yet. Don't know what I want to do in that one.
Hmmm......

Muslin Journal

It being Veteran's Day, and therefore a legal holiday, I had the day off. Yep, a whole day to think about art!
So I did.
Influenced by my good friend Roxanne, I decided to try something new: a muslin journal. I'm not exactly sure how to go about this, but hers looks so devine that I really want to try. I started by tearing an old pillowcase into sections, this one is 13" x 10.5", but there will probably be pages of different sizes in here, as I like the look of the one Roxanne is working in. I like the look of the raggedy edges of the pages, too.
This morning I soaked them in a tea/coffee solution to stain them brownish. Then, when they were dry, I stamped the sun using a rubber stamp that I carved myself. I watercolored all around the sun and glued dyed tissue paper to the other page. I collaged photos to the fabric and used some more rubber stamps. This page is a work-in-progress and I don't know where else I may go with it. I know I want to do some stitching of some sort here and I think I want to use some sort of stiffener on the fabric as I find it much too limp for my liking. Maybe I will use an acrylic paint to the reverse side for extra structure.
I will set it aside for a day or so to see what other miracle wants to appear.

Working Loose

This weekend I experimented with working loosely in watercolor. Lots of water, wet into wet, just letting the paint run and swirl around. The only pre-meditated, structured thing on the page was the cottage. The rest was come what may. This was a fun experiment and I rather like the outcome. Sometimes it's nice to let go of trying to "create" and just let the picture make itself.
The same could be said about life.